


Access Denied

by EmilyTT



Series: Deception [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Graphic Description, Mental Instability
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-19
Updated: 2018-03-19
Packaged: 2019-04-04 21:20:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14028984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmilyTT/pseuds/EmilyTT
Summary: He knows he can’t wake up quite yet because once he does he is powerless.





	Access Denied

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own these characters
> 
> For this series, some events will take place instantly after the previous part, or there will be unexplained and unanswered time jumps.

Darkness is all around him, obscuring him with its very presence. Normally, he is concerned when he recognizes being all alone in the dark, but this time he’s relieved. He has time to plan, to process and assess and determine the best path to go down from here.

He knows he can’t wake up quite yet because once he does he is powerless. So it is all he can do but to hope and pray that he got knocked up in the head hard enough to give him a chance to fight back.

Perhaps he can work a way to control the outside? To push it all away just long enough to deliver a message. It could work. He just needs the time to figure out how to do it. He has done it before, but not when he needed to, and now he can’t remember how he did it in the first place.

It has gotten harder every time to stay focused, to work and strive to focus, because focus is all he has and he needs to simply focus on focusing hard enough to focus on a solution…

Faint rays of light slip between his feet, and fear instantly washes over him. Surely it can’t be time yet? He’s only just woken up!

Chest heaving but not making a single noise, he whips his head around. His mouth hangs agape. What…?

There’s nothing there… no source for the light… it is simply there, on the ground… at his feet… taunting him with its very presence.

He blinks, and the terror creeps another inch. He furrows his eyebrows and unconsciously blinks again. His feet are now covered in light.

Curious and terrified, he tilts his head to the side. He has almost forgotten what his feet look like… nearly didn’t recognize them. But they were never so pale… never so devoid of color…

He swallows and jumps at the sound. He hasn’t heard anything in ages, hasn’t heard himself make such a miniscule noise in ages. Just the thought of it makes him want to cry.

And almost as if hearing his thoughts, something trickles slowly down his face. The sting in his eyes causes him to blink once more, and now he sees a pair of floating hands but a foot in front of him, palms facing down to the light.

Shakily, he watches as they flip over. His gut lurches at the sight. Nearly completely transparent, his fingers curl into his palms. He raises them and wipes at where he feels fresh tracks of tears, and he gasps at the unfamiliar feeling. Physical touch has become such a foreign concept…

At this new reality, a surge of strength overcomes him. He _can_ do this. He _can_ get a message through. Just a few more… few more… a little bit more time and he can fig-

 _Master will be very disappointed in you_.

His jaw drops. He blinks hard. His body freezes up. His legs are a little less visible than his feet, but more visible than his hands.

That voice… he recognizes it… can almost match it in his mind’s eye…

_We thought you were done with this mediocre plan of yours._

…

 _Turn and face me, boy. I said_ turn!

He gasps after realizing he hasn’t breathed in quite a while. He nearly trips over his feet in the process of facing the person.

That face… it’s so familiar… but how to describe it… menacing eyes… demented smile…

When it speaks again, the words are out of sync with its mouth. _You fool! I’ve protected you for all these years and this is how you try to repay me?_

But something about that claim… it doesn’t sound, doesn’t feel right.

He hears what he can only imagine to be his voice echoing around in this dark chamber with a lit floor and visible person.

“Protected? What do you mean?”

The being’s head tilts to the side, and he replicates the movement. Menacing eyes soften into confusion. And once again the words don’t line up with the mouth movement.

_I saved you from Master. I saved you from it all. Don’t you remember?_

“I… I don’t… please… let me out of here…”

 _We can’t do that, brother. You are not safe yet._ It gazes into the dark abyss. _This protects you from it all._

But something doesn’t feel right. Something doesn’t match up. He caught the flicker of concern when he blinked a third time; saw the way it tried to pass it off for confusion at his question. Saw the way its eyes spared a fraction of a second’s glare at his newly visible arms.

“I can handle it.” And he says it so forcefully, so demandingly that he’s nearly positive that it didn’t come from him, but from it. But its mouth never moved.

It frowns and gazes at him, its eyes calculating and lips turning into a frown. Then its face warps into a mask of unreadable.

_If you remembered what you did the last time you got out, you wouldn’t be trying to argue with me, my friend._

It sounds so wrong, but he can’t argue back. He simply doesn’t have a comeback to the statement. But he also can’t forget how he was originally spoken to… whenever ago… that condescending voice… “I’m getting out whether you help me or not.”

He knows he shouldn’t have said that the instant he does. It takes a step forward, and so does he.

Its’ hand swoops up and sends him careening onto the abyss’s cold, unforgiving surface, and his does not.

He blinks at the pain, and his body becomes apparent. He uses his weight to roll himself onto his stomach and pushes up with his hands and feet.

Its’ foot crashes into his chest with unforgiving force and all breath leaves his body at the brutal crack that resonates in the cage.

His body rolls several times before halting with him on his back. Tears stream down his face at the agonizing pain, and when he tries to breathe in, a horrible rattling noise coming from deep within him makes him stop the motion. He involuntarily blinks once more but this time he doesn’t recognize anything that seems to be different about himself.

It appears in his peripherals, and he wants to die at the sight of it. Cold, menacing, calculating, yet fascinated eyes watch him try to stop tears from flowing down his face.

_So that’s what I used to look like. Too bad your chest is crushed in or I’d truly know for certain exactly what I looked like._

Everything freezes. Confusion washes over him like a cold wave. Used to… look like…? What…?

Something clogs the back of his throat and he gags. Gagging is soon interrupted with haphazard coughing that ensues. By the time the episode ends, a new substance coats his face, and more of the sticky something is sticking to his… head? But he doesn’t care. He just wants to curl up into a ball and die.  He just wants this pain to end.

_Collapsed lungs will do that to you, kid._

But it is crouching over his right side, eyebrows furrowed and eyes filled with curiosity.

His ragged breathing becomes even more ragged if at all possible at the unfamiliar touching of its’ fingers grazing the left side of his face from his chin up to his eye.

 _My, my, what pretty eyes I have_.

It casually murmurs this, and suddenly its’ thumb plunges into his eyeball.

His voice scrapes itself raw at the pure screech of agony that rips itself from his throat. His head thrashes from side to side, all the while _Shh, little child_ is whispered into his ear. All his struggling accomplishes is pushing the thumb further into his eyeball. A muffled popping noise can be heard of his shrieks, and it feels like his throat is ripped from his body at the octaves his voice reaches to portray his pain.

It presses its free hand against a smiling face to cover the stench of _something_.

With his only good eye nearly rolled into the back of his skull, he can barely see when Its’ thumb finally removes itself. He nearly pukes at the sight of dark red combined with the color of some indiscernible fluid.

A relieving numbness soon overcomes him, and he welcomes the comforting embrace with open arms. The echoes of his shrieking soon begins to dissipate.

It stands and pulls a napkin out of seemingly nowhere and wipes a blood soaked hand clean. When It finishes, It stares at him in mild fascination. It speaks, but his blurry and fading vision can’t tell if the words are in sync with Its’ mouth or not.

 _I tried to warn you. You aren’t ready for what we have done._  It sighs and begins walking away while the light begins to overtake everything. _Goodbye, Richard._

Blood spills out of his mouth as his body heaves one final, ragged cough, and he nearly gags as the blood and fluid from his eye leaks into his mouth. He tries to whisper something, but he never knows if he does. _Please…_

Everything fades into blissful nothingness.

OoO

When he opens his eyes, he smirks at the obvious one way mirror, ignoring the chains binding his wrists to steel table. He can practically hear them deciding who to send in to interrogate him. He knows the answer before they do.

Richard may have cost him in his fight against Batman, but he can easily work his way out of this. With Richard gone, all that is left is Renegade.

_Bring it on, Dinah._

**Author's Note:**

> See you at in the next part!


End file.
